Day 10 of nationwide strike by Iran's truckers. These truck drivers are refusing to deliver loads as #IranProtests persist. Workers are often not paid for months. They now realize there's more to be gained by striking. (Footage from Kavar, May 31 via MEK activists) #FreeIran2018pic.twitter.com/mAEhmdlHf8

The truck strike started on May 22 in 25 provinces and 60 cities across Iran. And it’s not just the truck strike that is spreading unrest; other strikes have already been created:

I have never seen more protests in #Iran than in these recent times. Truck drivers are on strike. Teachers have been already for a long time. Minorities protest. Farmers go to the barricades. There’s tension everywhere. Through social media, protests gain publicity. Instantly. pic.twitter.com/W0EAtTnGQw

To no one’s surprise, the mainstream media, which trumpeted the Obama nuclear deal with Iran which propped up the despotic Iranian government, is not reporting news of the truck strike, but there was one major organization that was paying attention:

{The question is, how long will it take for the people of Iran to reach ‘critical mass’? – LS}

The Trump administration is examining a new plan to help Iranians fighting the hardline regime in Iran following America’s exit from the landmark nuclear deal and reimposition of harsh economic sanctions that could topple a regime already beset by protests and a crashing economy, according to a copy of the plan obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The three-page white paper being circulated among National Security Council officials in the White House offers a strategy by which the Trump administration can actively work to assist an already aggravated Iranian public topple the hardline ruling regime through a democratization strategy that focuses on driving a deeper wedge between the Iranian people and the ruling regime.

The plan, authored by the Security Studies Group, or SSG, a national security think-tank that has close ties to senior White House national security officials, including National Security Adviser John Bolton, seeks to reshape longstanding American foreign policy toward Iran by emphasizing an explicit policy of regime change, something the Obama administration opposed when popular protests gripped Iran in 2009.

The regime change plan seeks to fundamentally shift U.S. policy towards Iran and has found a receptive audience in the Trump administration, which has been moving in this direction since Bolton—a longtime and vocal supporter of regime change—entered the White House.

It deemphasizes U.S military intervention, instead focusing on a series of moves to embolden an Iranian population that has increasingly grown angry at the ruling regime for its heavy investments in military adventurism across the region.

“The ordinary people of Iran are suffering under economic stagnation, while the regime ships its wealth abroad to fight its expansionist wars and to pad the bank accounts of the Mullahs and the IRGC command,” SSG writes in the paper. “This has provoked noteworthy protests across the country in recent months.”

Jim Hanson, SSG’s president, told the Free Beacon that the Trump administration has no appetite for U.S. military intervention in Iran, but is very focused on efforts to rid Iran of its hardline ruling regime.

“The Trump administration has no desire to roll tanks in an effort to directly topple the Iranian regime,” Hanson said. “But they would be much happier dealing with a post-Mullah government. That is the most likely path to a nuclear weapons-free and less dangerous Iran.”

An NSC official declined to comment directly on the report, but confirmed the administration is consistently working to “change the Iranian regime’s behavior.”

“Our stated policy is to change the Iranian regime’s behavior of continuous destabilizing regional acts and support of terrorism,” the official said, adding that the White House reviews multiple plans and proposals from organizations. “The National Security Council is in receipt of reams of policy papers and reports, some are read with interest, others are not. Receipt of a policy paper in no way means that we are going to adopt the position of that paper.”

One source close to the White House who has previewed the plan told the Free Beacon that the nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, solidified the Iranian regime’s grip on power and intentionally prevented the United States from fomenting regime change

“The JCPOA purposefully destroyed the carefully created global consensus against the Islamic Republic,” said the source, who would only speak on background about the sensitive issue. “Prior to that, everyone understood the dangers of playing footsie with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. It’s now Trump, Bolton, and [Mike] Pompeo’s job to put this consensus back in place.”

Bolton is said to be acutely aware of the danger the Iranian regime poses to the region, the source said.

“John is someone who understands the danger of Iran viscerally, and knows that you’re never going to fundamentally change its behavior—and the threats against Israel and the Saudis especially—until that revolutionary regime is gone,” the source said, adding that “nothing’s off the table right now if Israel is attacked.”

A second source close to the White House and familiar with the thinking on this issue told the Free Beacon the administration recognizes the chief impediment to the region is Iran’s tyrannical regime.

“The problem is not the Iran nuclear deal it’s the Iranian regime,” said the source, who would only speak on background. “Team Bolton has spent years creating Plans B, C, and D for dealing with that problem. President Trump hired him knowing all of that. The administration will now start aggressively moving to deal with the root cause of chaos and violence in the region in a clear-eyed way.”

Regional sources who have spoken to SSG “tell us that Iranian social media is more outraged about internal oppression, such as the recent restrictions on Telegram, than about supporting or opposing the nuclear program. Iranian regime oppression of its ethnic and religious minorities has created the conditions for an effective campaign designed to splinter the Iranian state into component parts,” the group states.

“More than one third of Iran’s population is minority groups, many of whom already seek independence,” the paper explains. “U.S. support for these independence movements, both overt and covert, could force the regime to focus attention on them and limit its ability to conduct other malign activities.”

American policy towards Iran has failed to explicitly support Iranian opponents of the regime who are thirsty for a change.

“U.S. policy toward Iran currently does not publicly articulate two components vital to success: That a new birth of liberty based in self-determination for the Iranian people should be official policy; and that military action should be anticipated if other measures fail,” the paper states.

In addition to preventing Iran from ever building a nuclear weapon, the Trump administration must articulate a credible military threat should Iran choose to launch full-scale attacks on Israel and U.S. forces.

“A credible hard power option exists,” according to the plan. “That option does not consist of large invasion forces or long, costly occupations.”

Without a regime change, the United States will continue face threats from Iranian forces stationed throughout the region, including in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon.

“The probability the current Iranian theocracy will stop its nuclear program willingly or even under significant pressure is low,” the plan states. “Absent a change in government within Iran, America will face a choice between accepting a nuclear-armed Iran or acting to destroy as much of this capability as possible.”

U.S. officials must make efforts to publicly differentiate between Iran’s ruling regime and its people, a point that was also emphasized by Trump in his statement about exiting the deal earlier this week.

“Any public discussion of these options, and any messaging about the Iranian regime in general, should make a bright line distinction between the theocratic regime along with its organs of oppression and the general populace,” according to the plan. “We must constantly reinforce our support for removing the iron sandal from the necks of the people to allow them the freedom they deserve.”

(Obama welcomes Islamists who hate America and all for which she stands, while rejecting Cubans fleeing a Communist dictatorship in hopes of living and prospering in a free country. Please see also, Obama Feeds Cuba’s Firing Squads — DM)

A group of men from Cuba hug after coming ashore in Key West, Fla., in June 2016. (Mike Hentz, Key West Citizen via AP)

Menendez said the eliminated policies “reflect our commitment to the values of liberty and democracy.”

“We should never deny a Cuban refugee fleeing a brutal regime entry into the United States. We must remind ourselves every day of the continued oppression and human suffering that is happening – not only halfway around the world, but just 90 miles off our shores. The ongoing repressive behavior of the Cuban regime still haunts our hemisphere today,” the New Jersey Dem said. “The fact is the recent ill-conceived changes in American policy towards Cuba have rewarded the regime with an economic lifeline while leaving everyday Cubans less hopeful about their futures under a brutal totalitarian dictatorship.”

“And while more needs to be done to prevent the small universe arriving from Cuba who may seek to exploit the privileges and freedoms that come with the ‘wet-foot/dry-foot’ policy, those few actors should not destroy our efforts to protect the many who are forced to flee persecution.”

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WASHINGTON — President Obama today revoked the “wet-foot/dry-foot” policy that has provided refuge for Cubans escaping the communist island since the mid-1990s, prompting Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) to accuse the administration of turning its back on people fleeing persecution.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), whose family fled Cuba when she was 7 years old, declared that Obama eliminated the refugee policy, and the Cuban Medical Professional Parole program that encouraged defections of doctors and nurses working abroad, “because that’s what the Cuban dictatorship wanted and the White House caved to what Castro wants.”

“Castro uses refugees as pawns to get more concessions from Washington so there is no reason to do away with the Cuban medical doctor program, which is a foolhardy concession to a regime that sends its doctors to foreign nations in a modern-day indentured servitude,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

The Department of Homeland Security said the programs were scrapped for the sake of “ongoing normalization of relations between the governments of the United States and Cuba” and “a commitment to have a broader immigration policy in which we treat people from different countries consistently.”

“The United States will now treat Cuban migrants in a manner consistent with how it treats others; unauthorized migrants can expect to be removed unless they qualify for humanitarian relief under our laws,” DHS said in a statement, adding that the Cuban government “has agreed to begin to accept the return of Cuban nationals who have been ordered removed.”

“Cuba and the United States will work to further discourage unlawful migration to the United States and promote bilateral cooperation to prevent and prosecute alien smuggling and other crimes related to illegal migration.”

Obama said the policies were “designed for a different era” and the elimination of the medical parole program was for the benefit of Cubans. “By providing preferential treatment to Cuban medical personnel, the medical parole program contradicts those efforts, and risks harming the Cuban people,” he said. “Cuban medical personnel will now be eligible to apply for asylum at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world, consistent with the procedures for all foreign nationals.”

“With this change we will continue to welcome Cubans as we welcome immigrants from other nations, consistent with our laws,” the president added. “During my administration, we worked to improve the lives of the Cuban people – inside of Cuba – by providing them with greater access to resources, information and connectivity to the wider world. Sustaining that approach is the best way to ensure that Cubans can enjoy prosperity, pursue reforms, and determine their own destiny.”

On a White House call with reporters this evening, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said there has been “a continued uptick in Cuban migrants coming to the United States” since the administration’s policies to deepen relations with the regime have gone into effect, and officials “did not want to speculate publicly about the likelihood of this change for fear of inviting even greater migration flows.”

“There’s obviously an enormous number of — there’s a very large Cuban American population, and many Cuban migrants are already here. It was going to be too complicated, frankly, to significantly return people who are already here,” Rhodes said. “We wanted to get things right going forward.”

Rhodes added that “the best way” for Cubans to have opportunity “is for them to be able to pursue it at home through an economy that has continued to pursue market-based reforms.”

Menendez said Congress “was not consulted prior to this abrupt policy announcement with just nine days left in this administration.”

“The Obama administration seeks to pursue engagement with the Castro regime at the cost of ignoring the present state of torture and oppression, and its systematic curtailment of freedom,” the senator said.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said on the White House call that “the discussions leading up to this were very sensitive,” and that’s why Congress was left in the dark.

“The policy that we’re announcing today is effective immediately. We did not want for there to be a mass exodus from Cuba in anticipation of a change in policy,” Johnson said.

White House official said they hoped Congress would repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act, the 1966 law allowing migration of Cubans able to escape. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) acknowledged that the law needs reform, but said “the Obama administration’s characterization of this change as part of the ongoing normalization with the Castro regime is absurd.”

“We must work to ensure that Cubans who arrive here to escape political persecution are not summarily returned to the regime, and they are given a fair opportunity to apply for and receive political asylum,” Rubio said.

He called on the incoming Trump administration to reverse the part of the executive order eliminating the medical parole program and “allow these doctors to seek asylum at U.S. embassies or consulates in other countries.”

Menendez said the eliminated policies “reflect our commitment to the values of liberty and democracy.”

“We should never deny a Cuban refugee fleeing a brutal regime entry into the United States. We must remind ourselves every day of the continued oppression and human suffering that is happening – not only halfway around the world, but just 90 miles off our shores. The ongoing repressive behavior of the Cuban regime still haunts our hemisphere today,” the New Jersey Dem said. “The fact is the recent ill-conceived changes in American policy towards Cuba have rewarded the regime with an economic lifeline while leaving everyday Cubans less hopeful about their futures under a brutal totalitarian dictatorship.”

“And while more needs to be done to prevent the small universe arriving from Cuba who may seek to exploit the privileges and freedoms that come with the ‘wet-foot/dry-foot’ policy, those few actors should not destroy our efforts to protect the many who are forced to flee persecution.”

Almost no one in Eastern Europe is taken in by apologists for Islam, because they have within living memory experienced other enormous curtailments to their freedom.

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Sometimes life sends along something to cheer us up. It did so for me, when I came across a stemwinder of a speech made in the Czech Parliament a few months ago by one of its members, Klara Samkova. Samkova is a left-of-center — not “far-right,” even if the Western press would like to label her as such — politician mainly known as a defender of minorities, especially the Roma. In the past, she was even prepared to collaborate with the Union of Czech Muslims, though after being mugged by Muslim reality, that collaboration has stopped. Her speech was part of a parliamentary hearing on the topic “Should We Be Afraid Of Islam?” (Imagine any Congressman in Washington daring to frame a debate in that way, given that in this country, whatever explanation we give for terrorist acts committed by Muslims, It Has Nothing To Do With Islam).

There are two alternative answers to that parliamentary question.

Either:

1) No, Islam is being maligned by Islamophobes using scare tactics, so don’t be worried.

2) Yes, Islam is definitely a danger wherever it spreads – be worried!

The first is what we keep being told by political and media elites all over Western Europe and North America, who are willing to mislead because they don’t know how, at this point, to handle the truth about the ideology of Islam. The second is what you are more likely find in countries whose recent history has taught their people, and governments, some tough lessons; in Europe, those countries were formerly under Communist rule.

After the Brussels attack, the head of Poland’s largest party announced that “after recent events connected with acts of terror, [Poland] will not accept refugees, because there is no mechanism that would ensure security.” Victor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, declared that “we do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see….” Robert Fico, Prime Minister of Slovakia, announced that “Islam has no place in Slovakia.” The Czech Republic, which had in the past taken in a few thousand Muslim migrants, regrets even that, to judge by the remark of its President, Milos Zeman, this January, that “it is practically impossible to integrate Islam into Europe,” and made clear that the Czechs will not be taking any more.

On the Eastern Front of the war of self-defense against Islam, experience has taught people to recognize Islam as what Klara Samkova describes, as not so much a religion as a “totalitarian ideology,” akin to Nazism and Fascism and Communism, that attempts to regulate every facet of a Muslim’s life through the Sharia, or Holy Law of Islam:

“The law [Sharia] is an intrinsic and inseparable part of the Islamic ideology. It constitutes the core of the content of Islam while the rules claimed to be religious or ethical are just secondary and marginal components of the ideology. From the viewpoint of Islam, the concept of religion as a private, intimate matter of an individual is absolutely unacceptable.”

Islam is a collectivist faith (Samkova: “the concept of religion as a private, intimate matter of an individual is absolutely unacceptable”). For those, like the Czechs, whose history includes enduring the collectivism of Nazism and Communism, this aspect of Islam must be particularly troubling. Muslims often pray together in very large numbers, in serried ranks of zebibah-thickening submission, and receive their understanding of Islam together in the madrasa and the mosque. They are taught to defend the Umma, the world-wide community of Believers, and as a community to spread the message of Islam, employing the many instruments of Jihad, from combat [qitaal] to demography.

As for the morality of Islam, Samkova says that this “is not a matter for individual judgment,” but consists in following the rules derived from what was set out long ago in Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, and codified in the Sharia. Another source of Islamic morality – if it can be called that – is the behavior of Muhammad, as both the exemplary model of conduct, uswa hasana, and the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil. Few non-Muslims would agree that the Muslim Prophet’s life – including the murders of those who mocked him, his raid on the Khaybar Oasis, his marriage to little Aisha, the decapitation of bound prisoners – corresponds to their moral code.

According to Samkova, in Islam, the period of the Prophet Muhammad and of the earliest Muslims is that to which devout Muslims must always strive to return:

Islam doesn’t share the Enlightenment’s idea of the social progress associated with the future. According to Islam, the good times have already taken place – in the era of Prophet Mohammed. The best things that could have been done have already been done, the best thing that could have been written has already been written, namely the Quran.

Muslims such as the Wahhabis look not to some imagined future, but back to the Golden Age of Islam – and their mission as Believers is to bring back an Islam that resembles that of its earliest period, to strip Islam of its later, illegitimate excrescences. And for non-Muslims, that “pure” Islam of the early period is even more dangerous than the Islam that, in the centuries since, through accommodation with custom, had its hard edges softened. That belief in a Golden Age of Islam helps explain why, in a recent poll, fully a third of Muslims, though living comfortable and well-subsidized lives in today’s Germany, expressed a desire to live as they did in the earliest days of Islam, the time of the Prophet and the Companions.

Samkova keeps blasting away:

Unfortunately, Islam doesn’t want to be miserable on its own. It wants to take the rest of the world down with it.

Islam doesn’t respect development, progress, and humanity. In its despair, it is attempting to take the rest of the mankind with it because from the Islamic viewpoint, the rest of the world is futile, useless, and unclean.

Islam is a static faith; there is no “progress” in Islam. For the True Believer (and we should, to be fair, recognize that not all Muslims are such True Believers), the just society will attempt to conform to the earliest, truest Islam of Muhammad. Its “morality” is derived not from the workings of the individual conscience, but from taking the Qur’an literally, solving internal contradictions in that book by applying where necessary the interpretative doctrine of naskh (or “abrogation”) and, especially, following as closely as possible the moral example of the Prophet Muhammad as he is depicted, in word and deed, in the Hadith. As for the “rest of the world” – that is, all non-Muslims – they indeed lead “futile, useless, and unclean” lives, in the view of devout Muslims, unless and until they embrace Islam. According to the Qur’an, it is the Muslims who are the “best of peoples,” the non-Muslims who are the “vilest of creatures,” and it is the solemn duty of Muslims to spread Islam until it everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule everywhere. This has nothing to do with naive Western hopes placed on “coexistence” with Muslims; “coexistence” is what Muslims in the West will give lip service to, until such time as they are strong enough to drop even the pretense of wanting to continue that state of affairs.

Samkova is not fooled by the “Muslim” version of the International Declaration of Human Rights — the so-called “Cairo Declaration” – which is presented by Muslims as almost the equivalent of the original, but in its 22nd Article severely limits the free speech rights to that speech which does not violate the principles of the Sharia, or otherwise “violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets”: “Islam and its Sharia law is incompatible with the principles of the European law, especially with the rights enumerated in the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (and Freedoms) [or with the International Declaration of Human Rights]:

One has only to compare the International Declaration of Human Rights with its so-called “Islamic” version, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, to see how widely they differ on freedom of expression: the latter is based firmly on the Sharia and does not protect freedom of speech and the press as we in the West define it:

“Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Sharia.” (Cairo Declaration, Art. 22.a)

“(Information) may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith.” (Cairo Declaration, Art. 22c)

Samkova observes that Muslims are well-versed at exploiting the much greater freedoms the West offers them than the countries they came from, to undo that very West:

Islam likes to hide behind the religious mask [for] its permanent, deliberate, and purposeful abuse of the Euro-American legal system and values that the civilizations built upon the Judeo-Christian foundations have converged to. There’s nothing better or more efficient than to abuse the value system of one’s enemy, especially when I don’t share that system. And that’s exactly how Islam behaves. It wants to be protected according to our [Western] tradition which it exploits in this way, while it is not willing to behave reciprocally. It relies on our traditions, it claims that the traditions are important, while behind the scenes, it is laughing at us and our system of values.

Muslims in Europe want to have their own relentless assault on Western religions protected by freedom of speech guarantees, but are determined to try to censor, as undeserving of such guarantees, any criticism of Islam, which they are quick to describe as “hate speech” directed at Muslims. The freedom of conscience they have in mind is aimed at non-Muslims only, and only for one thing: they should be “free” to revert to Islam; Muslims, on the other hand, have no freedom to leave Islam. That kind of apostasy is punishable by death. Thus, this “freedom” is distinctly one-sided.

And Samkova is keenly aware that Muslims present themselves as constant “victims” because, having been allowed to settle within the West, they are sometimes thwarted in their multifarious attempts to transform, steadily and systematically, that very West, so that it becomes, ultimately, part of Dar al-Islam. Samkova suggests that we need a lot more of such thwarting, but she believes that the West won’t muster the energy and courage to do what needs to be done, and that force will ultimately be necessary. In that respect, she’s a pessimist. But she thinks the West will in the end rise to the occasion, and ultimately “crush” Islam, the way it crushed, she says, Nazism and Communism. This, I suppose, is a kind of ultimate optimism.

Islam is, Samkova continues, a belief system based on a regressive view of the world. The idea of progress does not exist; in Islam, nothing supersedes the time of the Prophet.

Rather than working with the world – as Judaism and Christianity, or at least the civilizations that have arisen from them do – Islam is filled with hatred for it.

Judaism, Christianity, and the civilization that arose from them have surpassed this unjustifiable skepticism, this contempt of people for themselves. At the same moment, Islam remained a stillborn infant of gnosis, deformed into a monstrously mutated desire to blend with the Universe again, into a retarded obsessively psychopathic paranoiac vision about the exceptional nature of one’s own path towards the reunification of the essence of one’s devotee with God.

Samkova delivered much more in this relentless and ferociously anti-Islamic vein before the Czech Parliament. And it was not only her speech that gave me hope, but even more, the overwhelmingly positive reaction to it by her audience. Instead of denouncing her, as would have happened in Western Europe, and in the United States, too, virtually the entire Czech political establishment and the Czech media endorsed her views. One commentator noted: “The speech was generally applauded by almost all Czech commenters at Internet newspapers of all political colors. But she’s not really exceptional, if you get the logic. It’s a speech that she gave, it was tough …But the underlying ideas are absolutely generically accepted by the Czech society…. what she said simply isn’t taboo in our society.”

No doubt a history of having been betrayed at Munich has made Czechs acutely wary of entrusting their security to others (such as attempts by the E.U. to dictate policy on migrants), and having had to endure both the Nazi occupation and Communist rule has made Czechs aware that all-embracing ideologies must be taken seriously, whatever the post-Christian nullifidians of Western Europe may think. And when you do not take your freedoms for granted, as they do not in the Czech Republic, or in Hungary, or in Poland, or in Slovakia, with their defensive steel tempered in the fires of both Nazism and Communism, you become keenly aware of threats to them early on. And while in Western Europe there are such outstanding personages as Marine Le Pen in France, and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Thilo Sarrazin in Germany, and Magdi Allam in Italy, all of whom have been warning about Islam, these are still regarded as political figures out of the mainstream, who stand out precisely because they still are assumed to speak only for a minority. That is changing, of course, as every day brings fresh news of people becoming firmer in their opposition to Islam, with the general run of politicians far behind those in whose name they claim to govern.

In Western Europe, even as many of the politicians dither, the people seem to have had their fill of aggressive Islam. At the end of August, 67% of the British, and 80% of Germans declared themselves in favor of a burqa ban. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ party, the PVV, is now predicted to come out first in the next elections. In France, despite being struck down by the Conseil d’Etat, the burkini ban remains so popular that many of the mayors continue to flout the court’s finding. But despite these welcome developments, eastern Europe is still far ahead of western Europe in its grasp of the meaning and menace of Islam.

When Klara Samkova speaks in the Czech Parliament on Islam, she speaks for practically everybody in the Czech Republic (“her underlying ideas are absolutely generically accepted by the Czech society”). Almost no one in Eastern Europe is taken in by apologists for Islam, because they have within living memory experienced other enormous curtailments to their freedom. Right now, in Europe, the threat to human freedom comes not from Communists or Nazis, but from the Total Belief-System of Islam. Whatever one makes of Klara Samkova’s own prediction of unavoidable violence in Europe, followed by inevitable for the indigenous non-Muslims – her pessimism morphing into optimism — we should all be grateful to her for stating forthrightly about Islam home-truths that politicians, and not only in Prague, can’t restate often enough.